Talk:Resistances (Dragon Age II)
Added DA II resistances (needs verified) :Discussion moved from Talk:Resistances I found a post at http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/dragon-age-2/show_msgs.php?pid=988968&topic_id=m-1-58515275 that had a bunch of DA II resistances. I modified the page to have table format resistances for DA I and II. DA II resistances use a different terminology. Either DA II "simplified" the engine, or the doc from link was vague. Anyway, I included a cleanup tag to make sure people looked at it. I have verified some of the entries while progressing through another playthrough. Enjoy. :You've got demons listed as being immune to spirit damage, all fade creatures in Origins took extra damage from spirit damage types. I don't see why they'd make desire demons outright immune to it in DA2, also Coterie immune to spirit damage? Doesn't sound quite right. Mictlantecuhtli (talk) 12:56, May 30, 2011 (UTC) ::This is most likely taken from the game manual, so it's assumed to be right (the manual may be wrong though)). The immunity only applies on the Nightmare mode. --'D.' (talk ·''' ) 13:57, May 30, 2011 (UTC) :Considering most people will not be playing on Nightmare, shouldn't the list reflect their resistances on Casual, Normal, etc instead with a note on Nightmare differences? The console manual is likely different, but I don't see any mention ( ) of creature resistances or them having immunities on nightmare. I don't doubt its true, just curious if the manuals differ that greatly. I for one would consider the resistance information "need to know" on any system I played the game. Mictlantecuhtli (talk) 14:15, May 30, 2011 (UTC) ::This is from the game manual of Piggyback, which is endorsed by BioWare. I've checked everything and the table doesn't have any mistakes, unless I went over something too fast. However, it's known that the manual had been wrong in some cases (stuff sometimes get changed before it goes to print, or it may be that they "forgot" about it), so this may need another verification. ::The only difference between Nightmare mode and the others is the immunity. If it's on other modes, it's set to "Normal". --'''D. (talk ·''' ) 14:21, May 30, 2011 (UTC) :::So you'd say its safe to start using the information in other articles? I immediately noticed how effective this list makes a frost rune and elemental weapons (Cold-blooded) when applied to Glandivalis. Mictlantecuhtli (talk) 14:33, May 30, 2011 (UTC) ::::Yes. I added this on the arcane horror article yesterday, although it's missing some other stuff from the game manual (forgot to add them). The arcane horror article isn't split like other creature pages since I made the changes, so this isn't the set convention (it's hard to read if they are separated by type of information rather than by game, e.g. "Abilities -> DAO, then DA2", as opposed to "DAO - Abilities; DA2 - Abilities"). Just to say that, as long as it's fairly consistent and easy to read, the styling for creature pages does not need to decided now as this will take a while. --'''D. (talk ·''' ) 14:48, May 30, 2011 (UTC) There's no entry for physical resistence in the DA2 table. Does this mean that no enemy has any kind of phys. resist/immunity, or that the values are simply unknown? If no phys. res exist, wouldn't it be best for a DA 2 mage to focus on physical damage (like stone fist or hammer of the maker)? Zarathustra01 (talk) 22:50, October 24, 2011 (UTC) : Not quite. While no enemy resists physical, the fact it's not effective against anything leaves it under-performing against other elemental spells. Also, spell cool-downs are too long for you to be able to focus only on the few physical attacks available. A mage's standard attack is faster and strong enough to out-perform spell spamming, so spells are to be used more for their utilities (ie, AoE, causing Brittle, knockback, etc.). It's always best to have a staff for each element and switch to the one effective against the enemies you're facing. SpeedBurner (talk) 06:43, November 26, 2011 (UTC) ::Thanks for your reply. There's a few staffs that cause physical damage, that's what i was talking about. But i noticed later, that the enemy armor rating is basically physical resistance and in 80% of all enemies, it's higher than most elemental resistances. So it's more effective for all characters to cause elemental damage, instead of physical (unless you hit the enemies strong point/immunity). Zarathustra01 (talk) 14:53, November 26, 2011 (UTC) Patch changed resistances? When I battled enemy Blood Mages, they were immune to spirit damage which contradicts the chart. I'm not sure if this was the case before 1.03. There are other problems like the Varterral being immune to fire on Nightmare. There are also some interesting enemies like Mercenary Assassin who loses the frost immunity that the standard Mercenary units have. Can someone verify the resistances given? SpeedBurner (talk) 06:43, November 26, 2011 (UTC) There's likely a mistake in the article about the Cunari / Arishok resistances. Not sure about the regular Qunari, but Arishok doesn't have vulnerability-- (talk) 15:03, March 24, 2015 (UTC) to Nature damage - only Cold. Tested on PC, v. 1.04, Hard. Since it took some time to take him down, I had a chance to test various staves against him. Nature-based staff does regular damage, while frost-based gives approximately x2.-- (talk) 15:01, March 24, 2015 (UTC) Low / Normal / Immune Personally I found it unclear, so I had to look up what was meant by "low" and "normal". I think it would make more sense to put "weak" instead of "low", to signify that the enemy is weak to that element, instead of having "low" resistance. I initially thought that the order was: normal, low, immune. If it weren't for the color-coding I wouldn't have even though that maybe the order is: low, normal, immune. This is because I perceived low in a different way: low compared to immune, and not lower than normal. Parochy (talk) 15:33, April 24, 2015 (UTC) Low / Normal / Immune – Revisited Hi. Sorry for still not answering on our topic … You're sure about these changed totals on Resistances (Dragon Age II)? Because now for '''Nature Immune has a higher value than Low – which would be the only instance with this ratio!? -- -- You talkin' to me? -- cC -- 09:58, August 17, 2017 (UTC) :Pretty sure; I added in the "Tevinter Hunters" encountered during Bait and Switch, which are functionally identical to the more common Slaver type (in fact, their reinforcements in the Alienage encounter are Slavers), so I updated the totals. But now we have the dilemma I've been mulling since I started in on that page; do we simply lump enemies together according to their armor, regardless of naming schemes, or do we keep separate naming schemes? The latter of which inflates the numbers, the former of which doesn't cover enough bases, which is why I amended the notes underneath for players to not take the raw numbers as proof of one element's "superiority;" there are a lot of Mercenaries and Qunari in Act 1, for example, and comparatively few encounters with Carta and Dalish (in some pre-built histories you don't encounter those groups at all). Thus, certain elements are valuable at certain times. :*I've thought about merging the Slaver and Tevinter Hunters (as I only seem to encounter the latter in Fenris' quests), which would reset the totals. One-off enemies like the "Kirkwall Official," "Corrupt Guard," and "Strange Hunter" don't merit a full category unto themselves, but somewhere on their respective quest pages a note should be made about their typing. A more confusing scenario is that the "Sailors" in Wayward Son are typed like Raiders, but the "Sailors" in Secret Rendezvous are typed like Mercenaries. There isn't a "Sailor" group on the Resistances page and the table wouldn't account for the differences in a neat way, and I recommend leaving it out for this reason. On the whole I've found observing the enemy's armor to be the most consistent (but not perfect) way of identifying their weaknesses, so if I had to favor one or the other, I would take armor over name. :*For discovery I've found Elemental Weapons and rotating staves to be a great resource: Immune is self-explanatory, Normal will show the +X element damage over the target's head exactly as displayed in the Inventory, but Low/Weak will be twice that amount. This eliminates many of the other variables that adjust or inflate the damage between the actual attack and the damage being registered (like spirit's 50% off discount against all forms of resistance). :The one thing I'm not even 50% sure on is the Coterie I fought during Loose Ends; they were registering double damage from spirit attacks, yet the Coterie type was showing "Immune" to spirit on the Resistances page. I can't be sure until I fight other groups of Coterie in later Acts, but it matches up with one of the kindly Captain Stabbities in Secret Rendezvous; no immunities, double from Spirit. Not simply inflated damage from less effective armor, but double. (The other was a Street Thug with Carta typing; no immunities, double from frost. Weird stuff.) : 19:05, August 17, 2017 (UTC) :: Before I'm diving deeper into this matter … I somehow feel like this Parochy guy on the resistances talk page – could you please explain me some things? ::* "Immune" as term is clear: no damage taken by this element. ::* "Normal" means: no resistance, no vulnerability, right? ::* "Low". Gahh! Low resistance? Or low vulnerability? I.e., half immune or double damage? ::* And then: what exactly are these totals? Percentages? Values of additional/reduced damage points? And how do you get them? -- -- You talkin' to me? -- cC -- 07:32, August 18, 2017 (UTC) :::Now that I think about it, the color coding is inconsistent with Resistances (Origins). I've now inverted the colors with Find and Replace in a text editor (replaced ColorPositive in "ColorPositiveStat" with ColorA, then ColorNegative with ColorPositive, and finally ColorA with ColorNegative, for future reference; one needs a transitive replacement to preserve them as two separate groups), and it looks like the Origins page now. Now, green means an increase (thus higher resistance or immunity) and red means a decrease (thus low resistance, so use this element). Now maybe low should be replaced with weak? :::Low resistance = 2x damage. I determined this with Elemental Weapons, as explained in the bullet point; because its power is based solely on a character's equipped weapon, its damage applies independent of all other factors. The weapon's description in the Inventory screen adds however much damage is granted by Elemental Weapons and persists until the ability is deactivated, which is usually a small number of +2 or +3. When an enemy is struck, this number floats above their head independent of the other numbers on screen (enable the Show Damage option), making it very easy to evaluate. In my tests, enemies with normal resistance suffered exactly as much damage as listed, and those with low resistance suffered twice as much as was listed. This was consistent across multiple types of enemies and different weapons with all five elements enchanted into them. Thus, double damage. For a more complex reference, a staff that dealt 70 damage per basic attack after all calculations, e.g. Nature or Electricity on a Guardsman Pretender, was dealing 140 damage when switched to a fire element staff with comparable base damage. Every other variable was the same except for that. Thus, I operate on the assumption that elemental weakness confers twice as much damage. I'm no expert on calculating exact damage resistance reductions, unfortunately. ::: 06:21, August 20, 2017 (UTC) ::::Well, then I'' would go and name these "resistances" – as you and others mentioned – ''normal, weak and immune; or None, Weakness and Immunity. And I would change the colors (also on DA:O) to green for normal, yellow for weak and red for immune, or viceversa. Depends on the point of view: for immune either red – as "bad for the enemy", or green – as "good for the player". ::::"Low" definitely is a poor choice of wording – simply confusing. (Applies to DA:O as well.) ::::I try to get through the 2da files these days, to see if there's some rules behind the values … -- -- You talkin' to me? -- cC -- 07:45, August 21, 2017 (UTC)